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Nathanael Nerode's avatar

This is good. Very good. Fill it with citations, tie in a chapter on how birth control bypassed the Malthusian problem (with reference to John Stuart Mill among others), and you have the makings of a real book on population in the works. Your outtakes are starting to form a coherent narrative on population, birth control, and feminism, you know... get a collaborator and get another book out of it?

Regarding extractive elites, this is a good summary so I want to comment on its present-day situation:

"Whatever social system they evolve will break down unless it (a) keeps their numbers low enough to maintain an edge in standard-of-living, (b) keeps their lifestyle focused enough that they maintain their edge in violence, (c) keeps their numbers high enough that with their edge in violence they can maintain control, (d) keeps their numbers and their skill high enough to avoid being conquered by neighboring similar groups of thugs-with-spears, and (e) keeps their exactions low enough that they are not destroyed by revolting peasants with nothing to lose anyway. "

The failure of the current right-wing elites is down to fundamental failures in (d) -- they have no skills, and are certainly not competent military elites (the Burmese Tatmadaw is the only competent military ruling elite I can think of, worldwide) -- and (e) -- they seem not to understand that there are limits on exactions.

The point of (e) is the fundamental point of dispute between Lord Grey's Liberal or Whig Party and the Tories in England during the Reform Act crisis of 1830. The Tories simply wanted unending, uncompromising extraction, and that always fails; Lord Grey wanted to keep his cushy position by keeping the other classes happy enough. Lord Grey was intelligent. The Tories were not.

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Kaleberg's avatar

I just read an interesting article on human foraging energetics comparing great apes, hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists. The general take is that humans are not particularly efficient but benefit from high intensity food gathering yielding high returns. Humans sleep less than apes, but, unlike apes, are so efficient they can even take a day off here and there. It's an interesting analysis. Farming comes out looking pretty good.

"The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies"

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abf0130

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